Foxes jumping on trampolines!

Posts Tagged ‘awesome’

Hi, I don’t have anything in particular to say. Just that I am awesome and have done practically everything on my to-do list and it’s only 2:30!

My recipe for success:
– Get up at 6 with your baby
– Do the stuff you can do while he’s awake while he’s awake
– Take a nap
– Take him to the drop-in centre (if you don’t have a baby, these are government-funded centres where you can take your baby to play and interact with other babies; sort of like the off-leash dog park, but for babies) and tire him out
– During the long nap which follows, do everything else

1. Warmth! Precious, precious warmth! It got up to FIVE DEGREES CELCIUS today. I walked around for about a minute with no gloves on and I was fine! Amazing.

2. Due to said warmth (and Monday’s warmth), about a foot of the 15 inches of snow we had has melted. I even saw some bald patches on a few lawns. I saw GRASS. Brown, ugly, dead grass, but come on! Grass in February!

3. The combination of 1 and 2 (nice weather, significantly less snow) made biking around actually pleasant. I biked to and from teaching and in between each lesson without wanting to die even once.

4. I don’t know if it was the nice weather or my mad skillz paying off, but all of my students were awesome today.

5. While I was locking my bike up on Yonge street to go to a lesson, a basset hound came right up to me and sniffed my legs. Her owner said, “She came right for you!”
I told her that I had two basset/beagles and we talked for a moment about hound awesomeness while I scratched the dog under the chin. She (the dog, that is) looked like Madeline as a full basset – quite petite and pretty but with the super-long ears, droopy eyes, and lower but more massive body.

6. The Dalek poster is here!

"Would you like some teeeeeeeeeeea?"

Ben has put it up on the inside door of his office. He says it inspires him to write better and fiercer.

7. Also the printhead is here, is installed, and WORKS. (Technically that happened yesterday so didn’t really make today awesome, because I didn’t have to print anything, but you know.)

8. I wrote a braggy braggy beggy beggy email (i.e., “I would like you, amazing person, to do me a favour, and you should do it because I’m amazing too. This is how amazing I am”) that I’ve been putting off. I don’ t know if it worked, but at least I did it.

I had an AWESOME idea last night for a blockbuster Hollywood romantic comedy. Screw opera and poetry, this is what’s going to propel me into the spotlight.

Here’s the treatment:

The Jerk Whisperer

Tagline: The biggest jerk is always the one you find…in your heart.

Matthew [Vince Vaughan] is the world’s first “Jerk Whisperer”. Author, consultant, media personality, he specializes in helping assholes reform their ways and become better people. He uses tough love and exposes harsh truths to get through to them. We see vignettes of him helping a homophobic/closet gay televangelist [Jack Black], a bitter former athlete who is now wheelchair-bound [Patrick Stewart] and an alcoholic conspiracy theorist Sam [Jon Heder of “Napoleon Dynamite” fame]]. He takes Sam to a bar as an exercise in normal social interaction. Unfortunately the conversation turns to the death of Princess Diana (Sam’s bugbear) and they get into a bar fight. Both are arrested and bailed out by Sam’s sister Kyla [Rachel McAdams], who is hot but kind of bitchy. Sparks fly between Matthew and Kyla. “I’m a jerk whisperer, not a bitch whisperer!” etc.

Matthew and Kyla date [cute dating montage: walks in the park, ice cream, paddleboats, romantic cuddling in front of the TV, sex]. They talk about how they met and what a funny story it is, how she bailed him out of jail. She finally challenges him: why didn’t he have anyone to bail him out? He confesses to her that he doesn’t really have any friends – sure, he has people to hang out with, but no one who really cares about him. Because he’s the biggest jerk of all, and even with all his expertise he can’t save himself.

Ashamed at showing his vulnerability, Matthew dumps Kyla. Unbeknownst to him, Kyla had taped the conversation when he confessed his lack of friends. During an appearance on Larry King she calls in and plays the tape on the air. Matthew is humiliated and his business suffers. He talks to his wise old agent [Christopher Walken] who tells him the girl is right, and that it sounds like he’s met his match. Plus the publicity will be good for him in the end.

Matthew confronts Kyla. “But that’s what you do,” she says. “You make people face up to the truth about themselves. That’s what I did for you. Because I love you.” He realizes that he has shut her out of his life with his harsh facade, that he has always shut down his emotions. Catharsis. They get together.

Credits montage: Kyla and Matthew on the talk show circuit together, hawking their self-help book – “Jerks in love: How tough love can save YOUR relationship” or something like that.

So if you’re a Hollywood director/producer/agent, please get in touch and we can discuss terms.

Lynne Rafter thoroughly re-imagines the play but keeps it faithful to the original – Claudius becomes a soulless businessman in a three-piece suit, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern a pair of venal and lecherous punks, and Ophelia – brilliantly – a weedy hipster boy called Aphelio. And, instead of having the play-within-a-play, a different local band plays every week.

with their blurb on the production:

6. HAMLETTE THE DAME
This retelling of the Bard’s longest play shakes things up a little. For one thing, the main character is now a girl, Hamlette, played by Lynne Rafter. The play is billed as a punk rock tragedy in which Claudius is a slick businessman, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sexed-up punks and Ophelia is a hipster boy named Aphelio. And forget Shakespeare’s original play-within-a-play. Hamlette features a rotating schedule of local bands to catch the conscience of the king.

When I heard about this production, my reaction was, “Is this supposed to be like ‘Hamlet 2’?” I was highly suspicious of a production of Hamlet where Hamlet was a girl.

But…

YOU HAVE TO GO SEE IT. RIGHT NOW.

It is probably the best production of Hamlet I’ve ever seen. Lynne Rafter thoroughly re-imagines the play but keeps it faithful to the original – Claudius becomes a soulless businessman in a three-piece suit, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern a pair of venal and lecherous punks, and Ophelia – brilliantly – a weedy hipster boy called Aphelio. And, instead of having the play-within-a-play, a different local band plays every week.

I went to see it because this week’s band was Double Eyelid, a new band that Ben plays bass in. I fully expected to hate it; but it was too good.

The acting was excellent, and the alterations to the text seamless. (“What they play’s the thing/To catch the conscience of the king” and so on.) Lynne Rafter as Hamlette was brilliant – she is an extremely gifted actress and brings through both Hamlette’s fragility and callousness. The company used the tiny Studio BLR theatre to the fullest effect. The only thing point at which I thought they could have used more space was when the band played – they had the audience stand up and stack the chairs so we could have a rock concert. Not enough floor space otherwise.

Overall, I cannot recommend this production too highly. I will not tell you how the duel scene was reworked, because it’s too brilliant for words. Kudos to Lynne Rafter on her concept and performance, and for keeping the spirit of innovation alive in the theatre.

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